How Loud Should Vocals be in a Mix: Quick Professional Vocal Mixing Guide

Every vocal is different and every song is different as well. But generally speaking, lead vocal should be moderately loud or the loudest element next to your drums in your mix. But to give you a quick actionable steps to do, follow this process below….

Quick Vocal Mixing techniques

Solo your lead vocal, mute all other channels

Set your lead vocal peak level at -9db

Set your Kick Drum peak level at -6db

Then Set your Snare Drum peak level at -7db

All other instruments peak levels may be set by taste

Now:

To answer a popular question I hear often…

How Loud Should be in a Mix

Should Vocals be Louder than the beat?

No. What you don’t want is a vocal poking out like a sore thumb in your song. That’s just obnoxious! Nobody wants that. You want a vocal that pulls your listeners into your music. Do not bury your vocal in the mix.

You’ re probably wondering.

What do you mean pull the listeners in?

When vocals are too low in volume, they tend to disappear and lose the attention of listeners. You do not want that. Stay away from burying your vocals, especially your lead vocal in the mix.

Moreover, these are just guidelines. Start from here, then find what actually feels good for each song. Find that perfect balance and relationship between the music and vocal that moves you emotionally.

Vocal Mixing Guide

How to EQ your Vocals

How to Compress your Vocal

How to Use Reverb on Vocals

How To EQ your Vocals

Use FabFilter Pro Q EQ to separate conflicting instruments, and elements that might be masking the clarity of your lead vocal. Cut out unwanted frequencies.

How to Compress your Vocal

Use compression to control the instruments with high dynamics. You may use it lightly or heavily depending on what the song calls for.

My Process: I usually will control the dynamics of my lead vocal with light to medium compression. Leave a little room for dynamics, then add another layer of the hyper-compressed version underneath for density. Like Jaycen Joshua always says.

How to use Reverb on Vocal

Dave Pensadorecommended in one of his youtube videos that vocals tend to sound better on plate reverb, hall reverb, and occasionally springs reverb.

Whenever you are adding any reverb to vocals, repeatedly use a pre-delay. Pre-delay allows a few seconds of your vocal to play before the reverberation kicks in. The helps create clarity in your vocals.

My Process: I always tend add more reverb to the backing instruments compared to the amount added on my lead vocal. Not frequently, you would want an extremely wet lead vocal unless the song or the artist calls for it of course. Plus, I use a lot of pre-delays.